


Borrowed Time

by pendrecarc



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: (Technically) Canon Compliant, F/M, Missing Scene, Nightmares, Outdoor Sex, Story within a Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-21 22:56:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15568194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendrecarc/pseuds/pendrecarc
Summary: The gods have given Eddis time to prepare, and their reminders are growing less subtle.





	Borrowed Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Minutia_R](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minutia_R/gifts).



The mountain stretched up before her, blue-green with trees. The white of her city shone on its flank. Her heart beat inside it with the heat of her blood, which was her father's blood and the blood of all the kings and queens before her. As it beat it ached, and the ache and the pulse of it built to bursting with her love and her pride and her fear.

She pressed her hands against its sides, to her chest, and tried to hold it in with all the determination she'd needed to hold her reign together in those early inexperienced days. As Eddis had survived centuries of invasion and recovery, Eddis Helen had survived an uncertain coronation, then war with both her neighbors, and had come out sovereign on this mountaintop.

Her determination didn't do any good. The heat came tearing through her and burned as it went. She wanted to scream that it was her own blood and her own flame and it should not hurt her so, but when she opened her mouth great clouds of billowing smoke came out instead. Her lips cracked. The smoke was mixed with ash that blistered her throat as it went. The heat sapped all the moisture from her tongue and charred it to a twisted lump between her darkened teeth, and then she had no breath left for even a wordless cry.

Her heart gave one last, desperate leap, and the force of it split the mountain in two. Her blood came boiling down the sides, carrying her city and her people with it.

"Helen," said a low voice, just audible over the crack of stone and bone that sounded like thunder in her ears. "Your Majesty." A cool hand gripped her arm. Eddis tried to pull away, but it held fast.

Her eyes opened to the dull black of cinders and heavy smoke. Her skin was burning. Then the darkness was lit by a rolling flicker of light that raced along the marble ceiling to outline the carved wooden headboard of her bed, and suddenly she could breathe again.

Eddis sat up, and the cool hand fell away from her arm. Soaked with sweat as though she'd been running, she missed it at once, but then the sheet fell away from her as well, and the fresh air from the open window was just as good.

"The dream again?" asked the king’s magus of Sounis from the other side of her bed.

Forgetting it was too dark to see, she nodded. Her throat was still too tight for words. She cleared it, meaning to try, but was startled by another bone-splitting crack. Her hand flew to her aching chest before she realized the sound had come from outside. Without turning back to the magus, she swung her feet out from under the sheet and rose from the bed to walk over to the window.

Her rooms occupied a corner on the third level of the palace. One one side they looked out over a courtyard filled with fountains and flowering plants that rarely survived the Eddisian winters; on the other, where she stood now, her shallow balcony looked out over a sharp descent, and beyond that the rooftops of her city, and beyond _that_ a cliff's edge that fell away to the foothills of Attolia. Tonight she could not see so far. The moon was a pale sliver, the rooftops lit only every so often by a torch or a lamp, and otherwise all was dark--until the clouds below were lit again by a flash of lightning.

She pushed the shutters open and went out onto the balcony.  Even at the height of summer, heat fled quickly from the mountain at night, and the floor was cold under her bare feet. Behind her she heard the rustle of sheets and the creak of the bed, but she didn't turn around.

The breeze was dry on her face, carrying no hint of the rain so far below. The sound of distant thunder rolled up the mountainside again. It must be a spectacular storm for those unlucky enough to be caught in it. Up here, she could look down safely. Up here, on her mountain, nothing could touch her.

She heard the magus walk up to the doorway and stop there. Eddis cleared her throat. ”It was different this time," she said. "It's been--changing." The magus waited without speaking. He’d been with her when she woke from the dream once or twice before, but he’d never had to wake her himself. She rubbed at her face where the sweat was beginning to cool. “I was going to say it’s getting worse, but that’s not true. It’s just getting closer.” More intimate, if she could say that about something so immense. It was one thing to see the mountain rain down devastation, another to have that devastation erupt from within her. “I don’t know what it means.” Or she preferred to pretend she did not. Ornon's last letter had quoted Eugenides on nightmares: _The gods send them to keep me humble._

The magus' voice was still sleep-rough. “Perhaps if you told me about it.”

“No.” Hers was roughened, too, but she knew how to sharpen it with command. “It’s not for you.”

“If Your Majesty would prefer to be alone with your thoughts, I will of course oblige.”

His tone was heavy with irony, but there was real deference there, too. She turned in surprise. Another flicker of lightning outlined his figure in her doorway, catching the streaks of silver in the darkness of his beard and hair. It didn’t last long enough for her to see his expression, but she did see that everything below his chin was swathed in a white sheet from the bed. He must have snatched it up against the cold. This was so typical that she smiled. “That wasn’t a dismissal, Magus.”

“Well, in that case.”

She turned back to the rail as he approached. His arms came around her from behind and settled across her chest so she was cocooned in the sheet. Eddis had hardly noticed she was naked, and shivering with it. She leaned back into his warmth, and his chin came to rest atop her head. She could feel him sigh, but the sound was lost in the low rumble of the storm.

“I doubt you’d find the details illuminating,” she said when the thunder had passed. “Anyway, I didn’t think you believed in dreams any more than in those myths you enjoy so much.”

“I do still like to hear them,” he said. His thumb had started to move slowly along her collarbone. She could feel the callouses from the hilt of a sword; so he was still sneaking to early-morning practices with the Minister of War. She would have to tease her uncle about revealing secrets of Eddisian swordsmanship to the enemy. “Would you rather tell me one of those?”

“That, I can do.” The first that came to mind was Lyopidus’ death by fire. Eddis shuddered. The magus must have noticed, but he said nothing. “If you want one you haven’t already heard by now, I’ll have to think.”

“Take your time.” His chin left its resting place. He began, slowly, to trail his mouth down the side of her head, pausing as he liked to do at the place where her unruly curls had been flattened and misshapen by the crown she wore during the day. A lingering kiss there, then another to her sweat-damp temple. “I’m in no hurry.” That was breathed directly into the shell of her ear. She shivered again. He noticed this, too, and smiled against her skin.

“If you want a story,” she said, “you should stop distracting me.”

“Distraction,” he said, before pressing his lips to the hollow under her earlobe, “is rather the point. If you hadn’t worked that out by now.” She let her head fall to one side, exposing the long tendon at the side of her neck. The slight sharpness of his beard and the graze of teeth made the softness of lips and tongue easier to bear, just as the cold breeze on her face undercut the heat at her back. “I have faith—” he continued, punctuating each phrase with another kiss, “in your powers—of concentration.”

Eddis took a measured breath. “Very well. Did you know Eugenides isn’t the only Eddisian name that’s also a title?”

That gave him pause. “No, I didn’t.” A point scored. He was so easy to ruffle over gaps in his scholarship, and she enjoyed doing it.

“Well, it isn’t. Galen’s is another. His namesake was the court physician to a long-ago minor king, and he had the favor of the god Asklepios. I didn’t mean you actually should stop,” she added. The magus' laugh was warm on her throat. “Asklepios gave him a long-handled bowl carved out of the same almond branch as the god’s own staff. When Galen’s medicine failed, he would have his patient drink from that bowl, and sometimes they would be healed.”

“Only sometimes?”

“That’s how I’ve heard it. But this isn’t a story about Galen. It’s a story about one of his apprentices.”

“Hold this,” the magus said. She took the sheet from him so his hands could skim down her ribcage, raising gooseflesh in their wake. “My apologies, Your Majesty. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Didn’t you?” His hands had settled above her hips, his lips on the vertebrae at the back of her neck. She bit her lip, then forced herself to relax. “Now Galen was renowned across many nations for his skill, and he often received requests from wealthy men to visit them and cure their ailments. He was so much in demand that he rarely agreed to these invitations, but sometimes the request was so flattering or the promise of reward was so great that he agreed. This story takes place on one of those occasions. Galen left his medicine bowl locked in the king’s armory, as he often did when he traveled, and left his apprentices to oversee the palace infirmary.” The magus had by then traced his way down to the dip of her spine between her shoulderblades. The difference in their heights was such that he had to stoop. She tightened her fists in the linen, as much to steady herself as to keep him from pulling the sheet away. “After he had been gone perhaps two weeks, a message arrived at the court saying Galen had need of the medicine bowl and naming one of his apprentices to bring it to him. So the apprentice packed all his things, wore the medicine bowl itself under his cloak, and set off in the company of two of the king’s guard. What are you--”

The magus had reached the base of her spine, and then his hands had tightened on her hips to steady himself as he knelt. “Turn around, but keep going.”

Eddis did as he said, turning so the balcony rail rested just below her shoulderblades. With the storm at her back, she could see the light flare against the palace roof, turning the stone pale violet against the inky black of the mountain beyond. She could see nothing of the magus, kneeling in her shadow.

“The first day of travel was uneventful,” she said. Her voice wavered as his hand slid between her thighs. She could feel the callouses there, too, where her skin was so soft and sensitive. Then he reached behind her knee, lifted her leg, and slung it unceremoniously over one of his own shoulders to spread her open and waiting. The queen swallowed. “The apprentice and—oh, gods.”

The magus freed his mouth, which had been otherwise occupied. “Concentration, Your Majesty.” He bent one more to his task, deft and practiced but maddeningly slow.

Eddis had held her composure through attempted coups and interminable council meetings, through the return of her thief one-handed from captivity and through his wedding to the queen who had maimed him. She could tame her voice for the time it would take to tell one story. She drew a shaken breath and went on:

> The first day of travel was uneventful. The apprentice and his guard came to an inn and took a room for the night. During dinner, the apprentice saw an old man and his young granddaughter sitting at the only other table in the inn. The old man carried a cane. He looked tired from the road and very worried. The girl looked sickly and weak, coughing throughout the meal and scarcely touching her food. When the apprentice had finished eating, he went up to the old man and offered to examine the girl. He suggested several likely diagnoses and treatments, but the man said these were all things other physicians had tried, and none had worked. He looked at the apprentice with quiet desperation and asked if he had anything else to offer. Of course the apprentice thought at once of Galen’s medicine bowl, still tucked so carefully under his cloak, but he’d been told time and time again that only Galen himself was ever to make use of the bowl, and he knew that it was more than his job was worth to try it himself. So he recommended that the old man take his granddaughter to Galen’s public hospital, where she could receive ongoing care. Then he bid them good night.
> 
> The apprentice and his guards made excellent time the next day. The sun began to set, and once again they found a roadside inn. After they had stowed their belongings they came downstairs for their meal, and the apprentice saw the same old man--leaning heavily on his cane--walk through the door with the sick girl.
> 
> He was surprised that the two of them, moving as slowly as they must, had caught up with him and his guards after a long day of travel. He went over to greet them and invite them to share his table. At the end of the meal, the old man put his hand on his granddaughter’s shoulder and asked the apprentice if he had thought of any other treatments since they had last met.
> 
> The apprentice looked into the little girl’s eyes, and she looked back up at him, but without any hope. As he had the evening before, the apprentice thought of the medicine bowl. This time he hesitated longer. But again, he said he had nothing else to offer.
> 
> The apprentice and his guards left at dawn, hoping to reach the city where Galen was staying before nightfall. Again, they made excellent time, but on arriving they found it was a large city with busy streets, and none of them had been there before. After wandering for some time they found their way at sundown to the house of the rich and influential man Galen had gone to treat. They were waiting to be admitted at the gate when the apprentice glanced across the street. There he saw the old man, dragging his cane painfully along as he led his granddaughter. The girl happened to look up at the apprentice at the same time. As their eyes met, she reached up to tug at her grandfather’s hand.
> 
> Seeing a third meeting was inevitable, the apprentice told his guards to wait, and then he crossed the street. The old man began to ask him how his day's travel had gone, but the apprentice couldn’t look away from the girl. She seemed even closer to wasting away than she had been the night before.
> 
> The apprentice held up a hand. “I have been thinking,” he said, “and there is one more thing we might try. Are you carrying any water?” The old man was, and when he produced it the apprentice took out the medicine bowl he had carried so faithfully along the road, poured the water inside, and gave it to the girl to drink.
> 
> He had never used the bowl himself and was uncertain how, or whether, he would know if it had worked. He watched the girl carefully as she finished the water, and it seemed to him that her eyes grew a little brighter and her skin gained a healthier glow. She handed the empty bowl back to him and smiled. Then her smile grew wider, and her wasted body grew suddenly thinner, and before his astonished and appalled eyes her clothing collapsed in a heap and a little golden snake came slithering out from underneath. The snake went at once to the old man and began to climb his wooden staff, entwining itself about the whole length of the rod.
> 
> The apprentice stood frozen, and not only at the impossibility of a girl turning into a snake. He had just understood who the old man must be.
> 
> “Thank you,” said Asklepios. He now looked, if no younger, then at least far more energetic. “And I think, young man, you have something of mine.”
> 
> The apprentice couldn’t think what else to do, so he handed Asklepios the medicine bowl.
> 
> Asklepios nodded in satisfaction. “Very good. Be on your way, then.”
> 
> “But what am I to tell my master?” asked the terrified apprentice.
> 
> “Oh, just tell him you saw me,” said Asklepios cheerfully. “He’ll understand.” He rapped his staff against the ground and disappeared.
> 
> It can be imagined how the poor apprentice felt, approaching his great master with such a story to tell. To his relief, Galen wasn’t angry. Instead he looked sad, and very weary. “No, I don’t blame you,” the physician said. “If anything, I blame myself. When Asklepios granted me his favor, he warned me against pride and self-importance. He said that the gifts of the gods are not always given forever. He told me a day would come when I took his gift for granted, and I would need to return what after all had only been borrowed. If you had come to me with the bowl and said you had used it, against my orders, on a girl you met at a roadside inn, I would have banished you from my service as punishment, because the bowl was not yours. But it was never mine, either, and I needed the reminder.”

Through all this, Eddis had leant against the rail, her city and the lightning-studded sky over Attolia at her back. The magus had not said another word but had bent diligently to his work, drawing her out as slowly and surely as a storyteller draws out a tale. As she brought the story to a close her voice was very thin, and her heel scraped up and down his back in jerky rhythm with her hitching breath. When it became clear she had finished with the physician’s apprentice the magus turned upon her with fierce concentration.

It was not long before she felt the ache and the pulse in her build once more to breaking point. Her throat ached, her chest burned, and the sweet shuddering terror of it overcame her. She dropped the sheet to press one hand to her chest and the other over her mouth, unable to tell whether the cry she meant to hold in was one of pleasure or fear.

This time when it was over, the heat that fled her left her limp and shaken but not charred; it was no more than she was meant to hold, and it did not carry away the mountainside with it.

When her trembling had faded, the magus slid her leg down over his shoulder. Eddis reached out blindly in the dark to find his face. Still kneeling at her feet, he took both her hands in his own, kissed them, and held them to his eyes.

“Thank you,” she said when she could trust her voice.

“Your honored prisoner is, as always, at your service.” He got to his feet with a low grunt. His knees must have been cold and very stiff. “Do you think you can sleep?”

“Oh, yes,” said Eddis, who thought she might fall asleep where she was if he would only keep her from toppling over. “But not yet.” She tried to take her hands from his, the better to reach for him, but he only held them tighter.

“Take pity on an old man,” he said. There was a wry smile in his voice. “More than once in a night may be too much to ask.”

“Hmm,” Eddis said skeptically. She ruined the effect with a sudden yawn.

“And besides,” the magus continued, drawing her with him back into the rooms, “you have a council meeting in only a few hours, and I’ll have to be up before then if we’re going to preserve the illusion that none of your attendants know I’ve been here.”

“Hmm,” Eddis said again, already teetering toward sleep. She slipped into the bed and folded herself against him, finding his presence odd and comforting both; she was unused to another body in her bed and regretted that she wouldn't have the chance to grow accustomed to it. At least, not under these circumstances.

The magus’ thoughts must have been tending in the same direction. “Did you think I needed the reminder?” he asked.

She could scarcely remember what they’d been talking about. “Of what?”

“That what was borrowed, must be returned.”

She shook her head, her hair sliding agains his shoulder. “I think I needed the reminder.”

The magus absorbed that. Then he said, “I take it you heard I received a letter this morning. Or yesterday morning, now.”

“I heard.”

“And you know what was in it?”

“I can guess.” The letter had been stamped with Sounis’ own seal, and there was only one possible reason for that. “How soon do you want to leave?”

“He is my king,” said the magus, simply. “I will prepare today and leave the next morning.”

And that, of course, was why she would never tell him about her dreams. The gods might send nightmares to warn her against pride, and she might kneel if she had to. But not to Sounis, not while she had breath in her body. This weakness wasn't for the magus to see.

“I’ll miss you,” she said instead. “And I’ll hope to see you safe again, and soon.” His king had need of him, but Sounis tended to forget that fact.

The magus made a sound of agreement. No doubt he’d considered the possibilities in far more excruciating detail than she had. “I hope for the same. But when we see each other again—”

They both knew how it would be, but then they'd known from the beginning. “For the last time,” she said, holding back another yawn, “I will not marry that man.”

He laughed, settling tighter against her side. “I’ll remember. Go to sleep, Helen.”

And she did.


End file.
